Joe Berlinger made his first independent film in 1989. Outrageous Taxi Stories, a documentary short, became a cult favorite on the festival circuit. Three years later, Berlinger and frequent collaborator Bruce Sinofsky received international acclaim for their Sundance-winning feature Brother’s Keeper. Named 1992’s “Best Documentary” by the DGA, the New York Film Critics Circle and the National Board of Review, the film appeared on the “10 Best Films of the Year” lists of over 50 major critics. Brother’s Keeper became one of the most successful self-distributed documentaries of all time, helping usher in a new era of independent documentary filmmaking.

Released in 1996, Berlinger and Sinofsky’s Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills captured a year in the life of an Arkansas town as it came to grips with the most horrifying crime in its history. The film also revealed the innocence of three teenagers wrongfully convicted of capital murder, sparking an international movement to “Free the West Memphis Three.” Originally made for HBO, Paradise Lost had its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival. It went on to win a Primetime Emmy, a Peabody and the National Board of Review’s “Best Documentary” Award. The film was released theatrically by the filmmakers and played in over fifty cities across the U.S. Berlinger and Sinofsky’s Revelations: Paradise Lost 2 premiered on HBO, updating the story four years later. It was nominated for a Primetime Emmy and released in theatres by Artisan Entertainment. Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory, premiered on HBO in January 2012 and was nominated for “Best Documentary” in the 84th Academy Awards.

Metallica: Some Kind of Monster debuted at the 2004 Sundance Film Festival, andwas released in the U.S. by IFC Films and shown theatrically in fifteen other countries, becoming an instant classic in the “rock doc” genre, drawing comparisons to Don’t Look Back, Gimme Shelter and Let It Be. The film won the Independent Spirit Award for “Best Documentary,” was nominated by the IDA for “Best Documentary Feature” and was placed on the “10 Best Films of the Year” lists of over 30 critics. The DVD of Some Kind of Monster was distributed by Paramount Home Entertainment, and was one of the company’s most successful music-related releases, selling over 1 million copies in its first year.

In addition to his feature documentary work, Berlinger has produced and directed a great deal of television, both fiction and nonfiction, including The Begging Game for ABC News and PBS/Frontline and Where It’s At: The Rolling Stone State of the Union, an ABC primetime special created in celebration of the magazine’s 30th anniversary. Berlinger was the creator of the VH-1 series “FanClub,” and the Court-TV series “The Wrong Man.” He was the director of HBO’s Judgment Day: Should the Guilty Go Free, an unblinking look at crime and the U.S. parole system, and the Emmy-nominated Gray Matter, which chronicled his personal search for 86-year-old former Nazi Dr. Heinrich Gross, for Cinemax, CBC and France 2. Berlinger’s fiction television directorial credits include Barry Levinson and Tom Fontana’s groundbreaking series Homicide, among others, and he directed and co-wrote the feature film Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2 for Artisan Entertainment.

Berlinger is co-executive producer and director of the acclaimed series Iconoclasts, now in its fourth season on Sundance Channel. In 2006, he won an “Outstanding Nonfiction Series” Emmy as co-executive producer of The History Channel’s 10 Days that Unexpectedly Changed America, for which he also directed an episode about the assassination of President William McKinley and the rise of Theodore Roosevelt.

Berlinger is currently developing two narrative feature films which he plans to produce and direct: Education of a Felon about the life of cult prison novelist Edward Bunker; and Facing The Wind, based on Julie Salamon’s bestselling nonfiction book of the same name.

Berlinger’s articles and photographs have appeared in the New York Times, ArtForum, Film Comment, Aperture, and numerous other publications, and his first book, Metallica: This Monster Lives, The Inside Story of Some Kind of Monster, was published in 2004 by St. Martin’s Press.

Michael BonfiglioProducer / 2nd Unit Director / Cinematographer

Michael Bonfigliois a producer, writer, director, and camera operator who has worked in documentary film for more than a decade. He has shot in courtrooms, jails, deserts, oceans, jungles, and metropolises, at rock concerts, Mardi Gras, off-road races and mental hospitals, working in eight different countries with people ranging from high-profile celebrities and politicians to rarely-photographed indigenous communities.

Bonfiglio began his career in film working with Crude director Joe Berlinger and Berlinger’s frequent collaborator Bruce Sinofsky, beginning with the theatrical distribution of their landmark film Paradise Lost. He was an associate producer of Berlinger & Sinofsky’s acclaimed Revelations: Paradise Lost 2, and their instant-classic rock doc Metallica: Some Kind of Monster, also producing that film’s massive award-winning 9-hour DVD.

Bonfiglio was a writer and producer of the Emmy-nominated Gray Matter, and writer/producer of Murder at the Fair: The Assassination of President McKinley, an episode of the Emmy-winning 10 Days that Unexpectedly Changed America. He produced the pilot for the VH1 series FanClub, a segment of HBO’s anthology special Addiction, and has worked on multiple of episodes of Sundance Channel’s acclaimed series Iconoclasts, serving as a producer, story editor and camera operator over three seasons.

In 2006, he was nominated for a Best Documentary Emmy for his work as Executive Producer of Left of the Dial, an HBO documentary about the rise, fall and resurrection of Air America Radio. He was a producer and camera operator of Two Roads to Baja, about the legendary 1000-mile Mexican off-road race and the producer of Hollywood High, a documentary for AMC about contemporary portrayals of drug culture in cinema that featured interviews with luminaries of cinema and literature including Jim Jarmusch, John Waters, Darren Aronofsky, and the late Hubert Selby, Jr.

He is currently producing Paradise Lost 3, and developing a number of new projects. Bonfiglio speaks Spanish and Portuguese, and is a member of the DGA. He lives in New York City.

Alyse Ardell Spiegel

Editor

Alyse Ardell Spiegel has worked in documentary and commercial film editing for the past five years on projects including feature documentaries, television series, advertising and groundbreaking web content.

Prior to her work on Crude, she has served as Associate Editor on VH-1’s multi-part series The Drug Years and And You Don’t Stop: 30 Years of Hip Hop with renowned documentarians Hart & Dana Perry. She worked as assistant editor on numerous projects including The History Channel’s Emmy Award-winning 10 Days That Unexpectedly Changed America and The Exonerated, director Bob Balaban’s television adaptation of the critically acclaimed stage play which followed the lives of recently released prisoners after serving sentences for crimes they didn’t commit.

As an editor, Spiegel’s work has appeared as part of the Emmy-nominated PSA’s for Bono’s ONE campaign to end poverty and the Clio Award-winning web documentary series Ford Bold Moves, which chronicled the effort to turn around the Ford Motor Company.

Alyse began her editing career after living in Cuba and being inspired by Cuban cinema. Fluent in Spanish, Spiegel has traveled extensively in Latin America and brings her passion for the culture and people of that region to her work on this project.

Juan Diego Pérez

Director of Photography/Associate Producer

Juan Diego Pérez is a photographer, cinematographer and director living in Quito. He has filmed and directed more than twenty documentaries over the past fifteen years, frequently focusing on themes of nature, people and identity.

His work includes Yasuní, winner of the 1998 International National Parks Festival in Sondrio, Italy, and Quito, La Ciudad Imaginaria (Quito, the Imaginary City), winner of the second prize in the 1996 Festival of Documentaries and Cities (UCCI) in Madrid. His recent works include Animales que Cantan y Encantan (Animals that Sing and Enchant) and 2008’s Rostros del Agua (Faces of the Water).

Pérez’s photography book Sapos Mariposas y Orchidias (Frogs, Butterflies and Orchids) was published in 2005, and he is one of eight photographers featured in the book Ecuador Mas Cerca del Sol (Ecuador, Closest to the Sun), published that same year. He is currently working on a new book of photography, tentatively entitled Identidades (Identities).

Pocho Alvarez

Cinematographer/Associate Producer

Pocho Alvarez is an Ecuadorean director, cinematographer, photographer and editor. He has worked for more than thirty years making documentary films with political, social, environmental content. He has made documentaries in numerous countries throughout Latin America, Asia and Europe, and collaborated with acclaimed writer Jorge Enrique Adoum on the book Ecuador Imágenes de un Pretérito Presente (Ecuador: Images of a Present Past).

Edward L. O’Connor

Sound Recordist/Associate Producer

Edward L. O’Connor has worked as a sound recordist for over twenty years. He has worked on both television and feature film productions for employers including HBO, PBS, National Geographic and The Smithsonian. O’Connor’s credits include the Emmy nominated series Frontier House and the Academy Award-nominated documentary My Architect.

Wendy Blackstone

Composer

Wendy Blackstone has created over one hundred film scores ranging stylistically from offbeat to orchestral to Latin to jazz. For years she has experimented weaving originally designed sounds with acoustic ensembles to create fresh innovative music. When Wendy finished scoring Dear Diary, Executive Producer Steven Spielberg said “Wendy’s music took the show from a 3 to a 9.” The show, directed by David Frankel, won an Academy Award. Five films Wendy has scored have either been nominated or won Academy Awards.

Feature film accomplishments include: Love Walked In starring Terence Stamp and Denis Leary; Nick Gomez’s New Jersey Drive Executive Produced by Spike Lee, Glenn Close’s Journey; Latin music for Betty Thomas’ comedy Only You; The Dutch Master, Susan Seidelman’s comedy starring Mira Sorvino. Wendy has scored four primetime television series: “Profiler,” “New York News,” “For The People,” and “Maybe It’s Me,” starring Fred Willard and Julia Sweeney. Her tele-films include “ATF,” directed by Dean Parisot; Ian Sander and Thomas Carter’s “Someone She Knows,” “Chasing the Dragon” and “Uninvited.” Her numerous collaborations with Tom Fontana are a highlight in her career.

Scoring documentaries is an imperative to whom she is as an artist. Some recent titles include: Crude, HBO’s ALIVE DAY: Memories from Iraq, Secrets of the Code, 9/12, Alex Gibney’s Human Behavior Experiments, Snoop Dogg’s California Youth Authority, and Locks of Love. Wendy also scored Anna Deavere Smith’s Twilight: Los Angeles 1992, directed by George C. Wolfe (Angels In America), taking her music to Broadway’s Cort Theatre and helping the show to gain two Tony nominations.

A native of New York, Wendy has taken advantage of the rich diversity of her City. While studying orchestration and composition at Conservatory, she studied with NY’s finest in Jazz performance and arranging. Her fluent Spanish is the result of her strong ties with the Latin music community and the bands she performed and arranged for. Her connection with the downtown music scene is a vital part of her artistic personae. She values her mentors, the late Elmer Bernstein and Dizzy Gillespie, who continue to inspire her.

Entendre Films

Production Company

Entendre Films is an independent feature and documentary film production and finance company which was founded in 2007 by Danielle Pelland and J.R. DeLeon. Ms. Pelland is an entertainment industry event organizer who is highly regarded by various industry players. Mr. DeLeon is a successful software and internet entrepreneur.

Entendre Films’ founders have named the company as a play on the expression “double entendre,” a word or phrase having a double sense, especially as used to convey an indelicate meaning.

Principally established for artistic expression, Entendre looks to develop, produce and finance films of social, political and spiritual significance that are engaging, entertaining and eye opening. Entendre Films is currently developing projects to partner with various talent, producers, distributors, and financiers who are interested in pushing the boundaries of filmed entertainment.

Entendre Films’ first project is Crude, a Joe Berlinger documentary about the largest oil-related environmental case in history, pitting indigenous Amazon people against the multibillion-dollar U.S. company, Chevron-Texaco. Crude will have its world premiere in competition at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival in the U.S. Documentary category.

Netflix/Red Envelope Entertainment

Production Company

Netflix, Inc. (NASDAQ: NFLX) is the world’s largest online movie rental service, with more than eight million subscribers. For one low monthly price, Netflix members can get DVDs delivered to their homes and can instantly watch movies and TV episodes streamed to their TVs and PCs, all in unlimited amounts. Members can choose from over 100,000 DVD titles and a growing library of more than 12,000 choices that can be watched instantly. There are never any due dates or late fees. DVDs are delivered free to members by first class mail, with a postage-paid return envelope, from 55 distribution centers. More than 95 percent of Netflix members live in areas that generally receive shipments in one business day. Netflix is also partnering with leading consumer electronics companies to offer a range of devices that can instantly stream movies and TV episodes to members’ TVs from Netflix. For more information, visit http://www.netflix.com/.

@radical.media

Production Company

To create ideas unlike any other, @radical.media is a company unlike any other. From its origins in television commercials, @radical.media has evolved into a powerful force in fields as diverse as feature films, television programs, music programming, original photography, graphic and interactive design, and the emerging field of branded content.

From the Academy Award winner for Best Documentary The Fog of War, to the Grammy Award-winning memorial for George Harrison titled Concert for George, @radical.media has received critical acclaim in the feature film arena. Credits include Jay-Z’s Fade to Black, and Metallica: Some Kind of Monster which won Best Documentary at the Independent Spirit Awards. More recently, the company produced Rent Filmed Live on Broadway, which is currently in theaters.

The company’s television credits are no less imposing, including the production of the pilot episode of the Emmy and Golden Globe award-winning series “Mad Men,” another Emmy-winning series “10 Days That Unexpectedly Changed America” for the History Channel, “Ironic Iconic America” for Bravo TV and the Tommy Hilfiger brand and “Britney: For The Record” for MTV and SkyOne. In addition, @radical’s fourth season of the highly successful series “Iconoclasts” is currently on air on The Sundance Channel with Grey Goose Entertainment, presenting intimate portraits of groundbreaking icons. Participants for Season Four are: Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu and entrepreneur Sir Richard Branson; fashion designer Stella McCartney and artist Edward Ruscha; skateboarder Tony Hawk and filmmaker/actor Jon Favreau; political humorist Bill Maher and music industry executive Clive Davis; tennis champion Venus Williams and musician/producer Wyclef Jean; and actress Cameron Diaz and architect Cameron Sinclair.

As the company grows beyond international borders and across all forms of media, it stays true to its pioneering spirit in marrying art and commerce. In the branded content space, for instance, @radical.media continues to re-invent the rules, producing innovative projects for courageous brands. With Wieden + Kennedy, @radical produced the “Nike Battlegrounds” series for MTV, which has placed among the network’s highest-rated programs.Recently, @radical produced two projects with Nike China airing on CCTV, which both won a Gold and Silver at the One Show Entertainment. Additional long form branded projects include: “The Gamekillers,” a scripted reality dating series produced for Unilever’s Axe deodorant, as well as Toyota’s “Two Roads to Baja” and its sequel “Two Roads to Taupo,” and the webisode series “Ford Bold Moves” and “The Adventures of Seinfeld & Superman” for American Express.

Most recently, @radical launched “driverTV,” a first-of-its kind video-on-demand channel available in 30 million homes built to transform the way consumers shop for vehicles. A newly announced partnership with NBC Universal will bring the channel to even more viewers in the coming months.

In addition to its Grammys, Golden Globe and Oscar wins, @radical.media has earned two Palme d’Or Awards at the Cannes Lions Advertising Festival. The company has won numerous Emmys, D&AD Pencils, One Show Pencils, MTV VMA Awards, Clios, Art Directors Club medals and the prestigious Smithsonian National Design Award for Communications Media.

Third Eye Motion Picture Company, Inc.

Production Company

Third Eye Motion Picture Company is filmmaker Joe Berlinger’s independent production and distribution company. Launched in 1999, Third Eye has been a partner in a number of Berlinger’s projects including Metallica: Some Kind of Monster and Gray Matter. For the last eight years, Third Eye has had a first-look/overhead deal with @radical.media, with Third Eye running the bulk of its productions through @radical. Third Eye is currently developing the fact-based narrative features Education of a Felon, based on novelist Edward Bunker’s acclaimed memoir of the same name, and Facing the Wind, Julie Salamon’s bestselling nonfiction book.